Body, Self, and Family

We still know little about the everyday health experiences of women in the post-war period in Britain, when the pattern of their lives changed almost beyond recognition.

Body, Self and Family: Women's Psychological, Emotional and Bodily Health in Britain is a major research project funded by the Wellcome Trust which examines how wider social changes affected women’s experiences of self, body and emotion from c. 1960-1990.

It explores women’s experiences at different stages of the life-cycle, emphasizing the interplay of body, mind and emotion, and exploring how women negotiated different sources of expertise and authority.

The project makes extensive use of oral history interviews conducted by the project team, in addition to existing oral history collections, as well as mass-market and feminist magazines, Mass-Observation directives, and archival material on health journalism and feminist, LGBT, and BAME activism.

The team uses this material to discover the hidden histories of women’s experiences of ‘health’ in later 20th-centry Britain and to address theoretical questions on the relationship between representation and experience in historical research.

Members of this project are also involved in a range of community and public engagement activities, for exampe, relating to experiences of menstruation and perceptions of fashion and beauty.